Treasures from American Film Archives


The Treasures From American Film Archives series of DVDs is produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress in 1997. The NFPF publishes these DVD sets, with accompanying booklets and extensive commentary, to promote public access to the films preserved by the American archival community.
The NFPF’s inaugural DVD set — Treasures from American Film Archives, issued in 2000 — was the first video anthology sampling the range of films preserved by American cultural institutions. Featuring home movies, avant-garde films, documentaries, government films, cartoons, newsreels, political ads, and silent-era narratives saved by 18 archives from Alaska to West Virginia, the set presented 50 historically significant works that had never been available before on video. By providing these examples on video, the set helped popularize the idea of the orphan film. When the first edition went out of print in 2005, it was reissued as the Encore edition.
Since 2000, the NFPF has issued five other box sets, each with a specific theme. More Treasures from American Archives, 1894–1931 showcases the creative range of American motion pictures in their first four decades through examples preserved by the nation's leading silent-film archives. It was the first NFPF set to feature audio commentary. Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900–1934 looks at socially inflected films during the formative years cinema, when virtually no issue was too controversial for the big screen. Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947–1986 is the first multi-artist survey of the avant-garde film movement in the years following World War II. Treasures 5: The West, 1898–1938 explores how the West was imagined and documented in early cinema. Lost and Found: American Treasures From the New Zealand Film Archive presents a sampling of repatriated American films previously existing only in foreign archives.
To date, six sets of DVDs present 227 films on 17 discs for a total run time of 3,059 minutes. All NFPF-produced sets are region-free and playable around the world. These sets are:
Another box set was announced in 2011, intended for release in 2014: Treasures 6: Next Wave Avant-Garde, with the following titles: Report by Bruce Conner, Radio Adios by Henry Hills, Hi-Fi Cadets by Lewis Klahr, A Visit to Indiana by Curt McDowell and Ted Davis, Plumb Line by Carolee Schneemann and 11 thru 12 by Andrea Callard.

The DVD sets

''Treasures from American Film Archives: 50 Preserved Films'' (2000)

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The films:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
  • The Thieving Hand, comic fable told through stop-motion animation and special effects
  • White Fawn's Devotion, western by James Young Deer, the first Native American director
  • The Chechahcos, Klondike gold rush adventure, the first feature filmed entirely on location in Alaska
  • From Japanese American Communities, home movies by a Buddhist priest.
  • From Rare Aviation Films
  • *The Keystone “Patrician”, Promotional film for a new plane
  • *The Zeppelin “Hindenburg”, home movies on board the LZ 129 Hindenburg
  • We Work Again, WPA documentary; includes 4 minutes of the only film of Orson Welles's legendary 1936 “Voodoo” Macbeth
  • From La Valse, George Balanchine’s choreography
  • The Wall . USIA documentary on the Berlin Wall
  • George Dumpson’s Place , Ed Emshwiller’s portrait of the folk artist and his world of found objects
Disc 4
Four feature films are included in this set; also: 46 short advertisements, documentaries, promotional and educational films, and some early experiments with color and sound.
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The films:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Exposing abuse or lampooning reform, films in the early 20th century put a human face on social problems and connected with audiences in a new way. Topics include: prohibition, abortion, unions, atheism, the vote for women, organized crime, loan sharking, juvenile justice, homelessness, police corruption, immigration—in their first decades, movies brought an astonishing range of issues to the screen.
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The films:
Disc 1 – “The City Reformed”
Disc 2 – “New Women”
  • Kansas Saloon Smashers, Carrie Nation swings her axe.
  • Why Mr. Nation Wants a Divorce, role reversal temperance spoof
  • Trial Marriages, male fantasy inspired by a reformer's proposal. A man tries marriage to several women and finally gives up on matrimony entirely.
  • Manhattan Trade School for Girls, training impoverished girls for better jobs.
  • The Strong Arm Squad of the Future, a suffragette cartoon.
  • A Lively Affair, comedy with women playing poker and child-caring men. The moral is that this is what to expect if women get the vote.
  • A Suffragette in Spite of Himself, boys' prank results in an unwitting crusader.
  • On To Washington, news coverage of the historic suffragette march.
  • The Hazards of Helen, Episode 13, Helen thwarts some robbers and overcomes workplace problems.
  • Where Are My Children?, Lois Weber's film against abortion brings in the issue of birth control as well, which is a bit confusing to modern audiences; Tyrone Power's father stars in this one.
  • The Courage of the Commonplace, a young farm woman dreams of a better life.
  • Poor Mrs Jones!, why women should stay on the farm; a woman works endless hard hours on the farm and believes her sister who lives in the city has a much a better life, until she visits her for a week and realizes that the grass is not always greener on the other side.
  • Offers Herself as a Bride, a woman comes up with a way to survive the depression.
Disc 3 – “Toil and Tyranny”
  • Uncle Sam and the Bolshevik, anti-union cartoon from Ford Motor Company
  • The Crime of Carelessness, business version of the Triangle Factory fire
  • Who Pays, Episode 12, lumberyard strike brings deadly consequences
  • Labor's Reward, surviving reel showing the American Federation of Labor's argument for buying union.
  • Listen to Some Words of Wisdom, why personal thrift feeds the Great Depression
  • The Godless Girl, Cecil B. DeMille's sensational film about girls' reformatories and his last silent picture.
Disc 4' – “Americans in the Making”
Independent cinema from Bruce Baillie to Andy Warhol, artists who worked outside the mainstream and redefined American film are collected in this set. An array of films never before released on VHS or DVD with styles ranging from animation to documentary are showcased in this collection of classics and rediscoveries, selected from five of the nation's foremost avant-garde film archives.
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The films:
Disc 1
Disc 2
A set celebrating the dynamic, gender-bending, ethnically diverse West that flourished in early motion pictures, including both narrative and nonfiction films; travelogues from 10 western states Kodachrome home movies; newsreels about Native Americans; and documentaries and industrial films about such Western subjects as cattle ranching.
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The films:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
2000
2001
2004
2005
2009
2011